This report is about flights in the United States. We wanted to limit our scope in the United States rather than internationally to get a better sense of the flights around us. Knowing information about flights in the United States can benefit us if we travel. For example, we can find what airlines are usually delayed, so we could possibly avoid them in the future. The datasets we used are from OurAirports and 2015 Flight Delays and Cancellations, from Kaggle.
OurAirports contains information on all the airports around the United States. Out of seaports, heliports, balloonports, closed, large, medium, and small airpors, small airports are the most common and here are 34022 small airports, which are the most common types of airports around the country. 51157 of these airports do not schedule their services. 2015 Flight Delays and Cancellations, the other dataset, contains information on Alaska and Delta Airlines’ flight information in one year. Delta flew 875881 times this year, more than Alaska Airlines. This dataset shows that people travel the most frequently on the 4th day of the week, so Thursday. A total of 240232 flights were made on Thursday.
This table includes the top 10 regions that have the most airports. This information is from OurAirports. It also includes the most common type of airports and average elevation of the airport of each region. Airport elevation is the highest point of an airport’s usable landing area measured in feet above mean sea level. The table shows that Texas has the most number of airports. California has the highest average airport elevation. Since Florida airports have lower average elevation, we may assume that Florida airports are vulnerable to sea level rise. Therefore, many passengers may be suffering from climate change.
| Region | Number of airports | Most common type of airports | Average elevation in ft |
|---|---|---|---|
| US-TX | 2280 | small_airport | 910.91894 |
| US-CA | 1088 | small_airport | 1043.40896 |
| US-FL | 968 | small_airport | 70.27644 |
| US-PA | 918 | small_airport | 892.81818 |
| US-IL | 903 | small_airport | 676.63526 |
| US-AK | 829 | small_airport | 447.08929 |
| US-OH | 800 | small_airport | 916.08750 |
| US-IN | 697 | small_airport | 759.15805 |
| US-NY | 668 | small_airport | 751.06977 |
| US-WI | 624 | small_airport | 964.16667 |
Q: Where do most of the airports lie in the United States?
This map shows all of the small, medium, and large airports in the United States. This information is from OurAirports. This includes Alaska and Hawaii.
What this map tells us:
Q: Of the two most popular airlines, what was most popular during each part of the year?
This stacked bar chart compares two popular airlines. One is American Airlines (AA), and the other is Delta Airlines (DL). The data was found from 2015 Flight Delays and Cancellations on Kaggle. This chart compares the number of flights between the two airlines across the months in 2015.
What we can learn from this data:
Q: Is there a correlation between arrival delays and departure delays of flights?
The following scatter plot was composed from data on Kaggle, called 2015 Flight Delays and Cancellations. The scatter plot compares the arrival delays and departure delays of the flights of Delta Airlines and American Airlines. The scatter plot uses a random sample of 50 observations from both the flights of Delta Airlines and American Airlines. Negative values means the flight was early by arrival or departure, and positive values means the flight was late by arrival or departure. A value of 0 means that the flight was on time.
Some insights from the plot: